Month: December 2008

Merry Christmas

General

If you celebrate Christmas, then “Merry Christmas!” to you.

Even if you do not celebrate Christmas but do want to participate in the spirit of giving, then here are three suggestions.

1. Give to First Book.

This is an organization dedicated to increasing literacy by giving new, age-appropriate books to youngsters who otherwise would not have any.

Several publishing houses support this effort, and each gift of $2.50 from you or me buys one new book for a child.

Can you imagine not being able to read — perhaps the most crucial skill today?

2. Give to CanCare.

This is an organization that fights cancer with hope by improving the quality of life for cancer patients and their families.

Several groups and events, including the all-volunteer-led Houston Marathon, support this effort of matching survivors of more than fifty different kinds of cancer to patients. The survivors provide one-on-one emotional support over the phone, through email, and in person where possible.

Can you imagine fighting cancer alone?

3. Give to Be An Angel Fund.

This is an organization that serves the overwhelming needs of multiply handicapped and profoundly deaf students.

Be An Angel Fund provides adaptive equipment and certain services to individuals and institutions that require a supplement to other sources of funding. Beyond the equipment and services provided by the Fund, thousands of volunteers donate money and time to buy, wrap, and deliver teacher-recommended gifts to these students each Christmas.

Can you imagine what these youngsters must need just to attend school?

101 Words

General

I just discovered a book.

It is titled 101 Words that will make YOU “Sound Smarter Right Away!”.

Compiled by Kim Rogers, this book would be a wonderful gift for a teenager or adult.

Inspired by the author’s father, who apparently learned every single word in a 50,000-word dictionary, this book is obviously a work of love.

I can imagine some of these words appearing on an SAT exam.

Those adults who know the definitions of these words definitely have an advantage over those adults who do not know them.

And the price is right, too.

The author has lovingly identified a collection of English words that are not all at the tips of the tongues of most Americans.

I confess that I did not recognize all of the words in the book. And some of the words that were familiar to me had different definitions than what I expected.

As my father loved to say, “Learning never ends,” and this book for me is an example of what we all need: continual intellectual stimulation and growth.

No matter whether English is your native language or is a foreign language, I highly recommend that you read what the author says about this book and then buy it!

“Ten-gallon hat”

Foreign Languages, Mispronunciations, Outsider's Perspective

This term has generated at least two plausible speculations about its origin.

Contrary to the first impression at hearing or reading the term, a ten-gallon hat does not hold ten gallons. Such a hat would best befit a clown, not a cowboy.

No, “ten-gallon” does not refer to the internal volume of the hat.

Instead, there are at least two possible origins to the term.

Both origins are from Spanish, both origins relate to distinguishing this type of hat from a sombrero, and both origins represent the effect of an outsider’s perspective in hearing a foreign-language term and corrupting it into something in the listener’s native tongue (in this case, English).

The first possible origin is based on the idea that a “ten-gallon hat” is for the upper classes, in contrast to the lowly sombrero for the lower classes. Upper-class cowboys were considered to be more gallant than commoners. The phrase “so gallant” in English is expressed as “tan galán” in Spanish.

If you “squint your ears” at the sound of “tan galán”, you easily could get “ten gallon” in English.

The second possible origin is based on the fact that a vaquero — Spanish for “cowboy” — would be awarded for cowboy expertise a narrow band, often braided, around the crown of the hat. Ten of these narrow bands on one hat represented the ultimate in cowboy skills. The Spanish word “galón” refers to such a band; “galones” is the plural of this word.

A non-Spanish-speaking, native-English-speaking listener could easily misinterpret “galones” into “gallons”.

The other meaning of “galón” is, in fact, “gallon”, so a native-English speaker with a knowledge of this primary definition of “galón” could easily interpret “diez galones” as “ten gallons” instead of “ten bands”.